


Bacchus

by fire_is_my_happy_place



Series: Myth Shorts [7]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/F, F/M, Lesbian Relationships, Roman dudes being shiatty, divine intoxication, divine possession, divine visitation, public sex in the background, semi-philosophical blarg, slaves in background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 12:27:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7171028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fire_is_my_happy_place/pseuds/fire_is_my_happy_place





	Bacchus

A matron, the final, filial duty, a draped figure who errs neither to an excess of cosmetics nor speech, the apex of ambition for a good daughter—it is all too easy to look into the disc of polished silver my husband bought me many years ago for the birth of our first son and not recognize the sober, dark-haired woman who looks back at me, small tracks of smiles and tears breaking the smooth skin I remember as a girl.

The slave has finished dressing my hair some time ago and stands quietly in a corner. I wonder if she knows that I envy her the strength of her body, the admiring looks cast over my husband’s shoulder.

No doubt she envies me as well for the wealth and small freedom of a citizen’s wife.

I sighed. It is foolishness incarnate to subvert the will of the gods, their hand upon us placing us here and there as they please. The goddess of matrons, in particular, has considerable feelings on the topic—she is a stern mother, a lover of the routines that make a home, and it would not be past her to punish me for the heretical nature of my thoughts.

Hera’s bust stands in the corner, a small brass bowl holding the day’s offerings. I murmur my apologies, pouring out a few drops of perfume, essence of hyssop and lily, in the bowl. It’s unlikely that she will be appeased, but at least she knows that I will fulfill my duties.

I have never felt close to her as I have other gods, and had my family not planned my marriage from birth, I would have been happy to roam the hills as Artemis’ servants, though my heart has always been closer to the temple of Aphrodite, even forbidden as I am to set foot in her halls, with their endless celebration of carnality.

I snuck out of my father’s house once to watch the celebrations from a safe distance, learning much of aid for my marriage in the contortions of the sacred whores. My husband professes to be amazed, even now, that a noble virgin would have had such enthusiasm for the act of begetting children.

Of course, he professes it over his cups to his male friends, often before they stagger out of the house to find younger company, so I am not sure his confessions are anything but the bragging of men, and certainly no reason for him to forsake the company of sacred whores and beautiful young men after our sons were born, leaving me in a house empty of any with whom I could speak, could share the way time creeps into memory and frosts it in dust.

If we had a daughter, perhaps I would have felt differently about my home. But my sons took after their father—large, strapping, loud boys who love the competition more than the company of their mother and other unmanly activities. All too many evenings, I haunt the house alone, watching from the windows as senators, generals, spokesmen, and the favored of the gods stumble toward the temple districts together, coming home at dawn if they come home at all.

Noble wives do more watching than any but the slaves, I think. We may meet together if we wish, but what woman wishes to meet with her husband’s competitor, or to become close to someone who we might be forced to ignore as our husbands’ fortunes ebb and flow?

On evenings like this and many others, the quiet drone of bugs singing in the night, we are so many black shapes at the windows as our husbands go out to take their pleasures. We see each other, but there is little to say, little to do other than wave once, acknowledging that our watch begins. I have no doubt that some of us take our pleasures with our slaves, and sometimes I have seen young men sneaking into this house or that, but I have never let such things occur—my husband is a sleeping lion, and I have no desire to pull his whiskers and risk the ravaging that follows.

I have, at least, cultivated a habit of reading the contents of my husband’s scrolls, a way to keep myself from falling prey to the deep ennui that drives so many of us to drink. A small thrill, albeit one that I may never discuss.

My habit, this night as others, is to take the scroll to the window and read it in the fading light, the first cool breezes of the night flowing gently in the window, the rustle the thin skin and lift the small hairs on the back of my neck.

The first sound I heard, I ignored. A husband, perhaps, having forgotten his robe or a purse, or perhaps just tiring of their eternal carnival of flesh and wine.

The scroll rustled again, and I frowned, smoothing it carefully to prevent it from being ruined and giving me away.

The sound of a shepherd’s pipe, faint and growing clearer.

A slave perhaps, using the deep blue of evening to practice music. I have never minded such things. They are still people, albeit slaves, and music is a joy to the soul and a gift of the gods, a mystery that I know to be beyond me.

The melody is beautiful. Plaintive and inviting.

I hope the slave’s master allows him greater freedom to practice. Such skill is a rare gift. The scroll told me very little I did not know, the clumsy block print of the scribe no harder to recognize than any of the missives sent by legates and prelates from the places my husband sends them.

Bells, sweet and piping, the measured rap of a palm on a skin drum, the melody growing merry.

Perhaps the slaves play together. They are truly talented, and when I finish the last lines of the scrolls, I will look up and see where they are, perhaps tuck coins into their hands as appreciation.

My husband’s campaign among the savages of Gaul goes poorly and it does not surprise me. Some peoples are very poorly suited to the rigor and demand of our life.

A voice, a deep and lovely male voice, first wordless, woven seamlessly through the pipe, the bells, the skin drum. And then words, calling me away from the account of my husband’s failures. I looked up in time to see the procession wind past the walls of my home.

Torches, pitch spitting and cracking, in the hands of women such as I have not seen. The tan and strong bodies of Artemis’ hunters, the merry and seductive faces and movements of Aphrodites’ lovers, clothing fit to be worn by wealthy matrons—deep indigo, the crimson of wine, green fit to decorate the hills in the depths of summer, crowned in vines and flowers, the nodding heads of poppies, the tiny white stars of Aphrodite’s tears, the blown red of wild roses, black globes of grapes in their wild curls.

They sing and dance, bells at wrists and ankles like the temple dancers, the song growing louder and sweeter and wilder. At their head, the most beautiful young man I have ever seen, a smile fit to set fire to the slopes of Olympus on his red, red lips.

I must have fallen asleep reading the dry, painful account of trade losses. There is no other possible account of it.

And yet, around me, women and men pour out of the great homes, slaves and matrons, as he has arranged an entertainment just for us.

Foolishness, no doubt, even though my heart sings within me to hear it.

I roll the scroll up carefully, tucking it at just the angle my husband left it, in the groove he has worn in his desk for bad news.

It could not hurt to watch, though. Touching my hair to ensure that the curls still sit in their rigid rings, I go back to the window.

He is staring up at it, staring up at me, a boy whose face must make him the most coveted companion at his temple, the lush pout of his lips breaking into a private smile as I lean on the window ledge.

It does not matter how he smiles at me, I will not go down. I am a matron of good standing, my husband a powerful member of the Forum, and a man whom Mars has favored with the temper of a titan and Janus with the ability to hide it, to his success.

And still, he smiles, his eyes dark as the seas of night, the women of the procession dancing around him, the slaves and then matrons joining them, tossing waves around him, shrieking with joy.

And still he smiles, his expression growing radiant and tender, the women around him surging forward to touch and then back, stumbling, as if merely touching him were enough to make them prostrate with drink.

My slaves are pouring out of the house, the air growing stuffy and close. The breeze coming in the window smells like flowers and sweet musk, fruit I cannot name, the slightly dusty smell of grape skins when they are fit to pop with juice.

My mouth tastes like honey wine, like my first kiss, the only kiss that ever made me drunk, the lips of a girl I have not seen since my family started to prepare me for marriage.

The little hairs stand up on my arms. His face is bright, catching the light like a statue of gold, and his expression is no less joyful.

He is no man.

I am being visited by the gods, and I have done nothing to merit it. The capricious gods have no business here on this street, among the staid houses of the wealthy and not in the temple row, among the beauty and the money and the voices raised in devotion.

I can almost hear a voice, something thrumming just beneath my skin. Under my window, he gives me another smile, regretful and forgiving, and turns back toward the dance around him and I cannot bear it.

I am being visited by the gods, and I am denying them. I am denying the joy on his face, the laughter and the life that flows in a bright tide around the dancers.

I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to go back to the desk, to the night spent watching the distant glow of the temples, watching our still figures in the windows, the slaves bedding down but for the boy who watches the door, waiting and waiting and waiting until my husband comes home, hoping that he is pleased.

I cannot bear to lie like that again.

Gathering the folds of my toga around me, I run down the stairs, pushing through the gate panting with unaccustomed effort, to stand, sweating and afraid, by the gate. I have not left the house without slaves and my husband for years, never appearing flushed and undignified.

My slaves are still dancing, their faces bright with happiness, even the most devoted matrons dancing with them, arms linking and swaying, the music growing more demanding, a woman twice my age stepping at first stiffly and then not through a dance that I have only seen performed from a distance in Aphrodite’s temple.

He has turned back to look at me, smiling triumphantly, and I do not know what to say to him, but a woman links her arm through mine, hard and slippery with sweat, and the procession moves again, a song breaking out among us. I do not know the words but they are easy to learn, the sound swelling through us and breaking into a simple chant of blessing, of hope and the great tide of life and youth and the sweetness of lips on ours, the dizzy elation of wine and the good will of the gods, my body at first stiff with embarrassment, with the need to keep my curls in their elaborate net, the need to keep the gold of my ornaments from falling away, to keep dirt from the silk my husband imports from countries far in the east.

And then, I cannot resist them. I cannot resist the arm through mine, the song and the frenzied tattoo of the drummer’s palms against the hide of their drums like the heartbeat of a great animal, the pipes soaring and falling, the tune breaking and coming back together as we pass through the slave quarters and the poorest section of town, youth flooding through my veins again as if time itself had stopped, women and some men leaving their homes and hovels, their tents on the side of muddy roads and stone ones, linking hands with this woman or that man and joining the song.

My hair fell, first in single curls and then in a flood I had not worn before the eyes of men who were not my husband or sons since I was a girl, and I could not care, trampling the gold ornaments into the dirt, the musk of my sweat rising from me as I move.

We left the city entirely and danced together up the great mountain that loomed above the city, the bright figure of the boy leading us, singing and dancing and smiling, coming to a great clearing, a bowl carved in the rock by the hands of the gods, great casks of wine sitting, open, beside tables that groaned with food I have never imagined.

The arm through mine spun me and I turned on the toe of a sandal, shrieking with laughter and dizzy, the green of the hills rolling around me, happiness bubbling in my veins. A silence fell over us, a hush that we could not do other than to obey, turning toward the boy where he stood on a great rock.

His voice was the sound of a lover’s cry, the low and beautiful groan of your beloved where they lay in your arms, and I could not stop thinking of the girl, a woman now, whose kiss had made me long to join the temples of Artemis and Aphrodite.

He bade us eat, but only if we wished his blessing, and then I knew him.

Bacchus stood among us, Aphrodite’s son, the beloved of the gods, the god of wine and song and the wild and sacred call of intoxication.

We froze, many of us, watching him where he stood, accompanied by music from no source we could see, his body gathering the light as if it were a bonfire. As I watched, many turned back, their faces pale with fear, and he let them, the women who had played instruments surrounding the rock with the ecstatic faces of priestesses caught up in divine rapture.

Maenads. They were maenads. His beloved priestesses who might tear an interloper to shreds or treat them to ambrosia according to his whim.

The crowd kept peeling away, some running so hard they left their sandals in the dust.

I knew I should go back to the quiet home of my husband, back to our children, now grown and married and trying for their own sons. I should go back to the scrolls, to waiting for my husband to come home and give me the kiss of peace on a cheek before falling into bed, to planning meals and dinners for him, to celebrating his successes and mourning, if he permitted it, his failures.

I should go back to the bust of Hera, waiting for me, the small brass bowl with perfume and milk and honey, small offerings of apology.

The crowd had thinned, matrons and slaves, the poor and the merchants and many who had come fading back into the night, leaving but a handful of us standing under his wine-dark eyes, his expression losing some small fraction of its joy and becoming almost a little sad, a young god once again disappointed with the frailties of humanity.

I could not go back to that house.

Instead, I stepped forward, my sandal rasping loudly against the small stones of the hill. Even if I were torn to bits, even if I were only touched by his presence for a night, I could not give up the youth, the life that even now flowed through me, washing away the gray hairs, the nights at the window, the slow hate I apologized to Hera for every day, rueful frustration brewed into poison by the great weight of being a matron, of a husband whose ambition meant everything, was everything.

He climbed gracefully down the rock, his priestesses parting, welcoming smiles breaking across their faces like the first waves touched by dawn.

I met him within a few steps and stopped, unsure what to say or do. How does one meet a god? What does one offer a god?

He held out his arms and I stepped into them, wrapping my arms around a body whose touch flowed through me like the strong, clear liquor our vintner takes eight moons to make, spreading pleasure like a flood through the pipes of my veins.

 _Will you serve_ , he asked, the voice of a lover long denied in his voice.

And then, his head lowered into a kiss, a divine forge that destroyed me as a scroll on a fire, my curls streaming away from us in the breath of the blaze.

He let me go, reaching for the next arms, and his priestesses caught me, passing me from woman to woman as I came back to my flesh, the ignored aches of age gone, my flesh buzzing with a vigor I had forgotten existed, the world clear and incomprehensibly beautiful around me, the call of a bird a music more perfect than the best the city had ever offered me.

Around me, in the night, the clear and graceful forms of beasts slid through the lace of leaves, the night wind caressing us all tenderly, softer than the stained silk that was falling from my shoulders, my body once again slim as a girl’s, unmarked by the scars of birth or my husband’s temper, supple and gloriously alive with the promise of movement.

The woman holding me looked down at me, her eyes alight and a fond smile on her lips, and I recognized her as another touched by our god, bound together by ties closer than blood.

 _Sister_ , she said, as to a loved one gone and thought dead, the storm-front of tears beading her eyes and mine.

At the sound of her voice, I recognized her again, the roundness of childhood gone from her unmarked cheeks, her hair dark and glossy as the wing of a blackbird, velvety against my arm, eyes the deep loam of fertile earth, the lips that had taught me a kiss may sear as a hearth fire cannot.

 _Sister_ , I repeated, my fingers tracing her smile, curved as a bow and soft as the first flush of love.

She kissed me for that and it was everything I remembered and more, a clarion call and the music of Orpheus and an echo of Bacchus’ kiss that was all her own, something only she could give to me.

Bacchus spoke again, his voice echoing through us as we rang like the bells at our ankles and wrist, the golden sound of joy, words sinking past the ear and into us, absorbed as if he were a liquid and we a cloth laid prostrate on its trembling surface.

My body, warm and effortless, arm linked through hers and alive with her touch, we went together to the table, to the wine and the food Bacchus blessed, his hands lingering over the table, eyes closed, the air radiant around him.

The first sip of wine, taste full of the grapes she fed me before our first kiss, gilt with the salt of her fingers and popping in my mouth.

She fed me a grape again, her fingers deftly tucking it in my lips before touching them, memory opening her eyes into great wells like the night sky, full of stars.

I kissed her to drink from her lips that memory and the flavor of her mouth, the divine feel of her body pressed to mine, her fingers winding in my hair, her breasts soft against my own, the kiss flowing between us, a gift and not the tithe of the conquered.

I had forgotten a kiss could be so, could be an endless reflection of splendor.

Her fingers twitched the last clasp on my shoulders open, silk slithering to my feet, and I did not care who saw my love touching me, could not care.

Her tunic, a simple drape of linen, joined it easily, her skin slick and dear against mine, a familiarity that time could never dull, the echo of desire reverberating into strength between us.

The sighs and faint moans of the women and men who had stayed echoed from the bowl of the rock. Bacchus himself roamed from body to body—a kiss, a caress, stopping to sink down and press himself into his followers, their bodies spilling around him in divine and mindless ecstasy.

 _It is part of his gift_ , she said, smiling at me. _The sour bite of grief gone as if it had never been. We are born again, from dust into pleasure_.

We watched together, her body a sweet weight in my arms, moonlight spilling silver over the bodies of our sisters and brothers, shameless under the blessing of their god. I was transfixed by it, overwhelmed, mute with the emptiness left by the life I had lived and the sheer weight of passionless years begging to be heard and given account for.

My beloved shifted in my arms, her lips wandering a stream of fire over my cheek.

 _Memory_ , I whispered, and she heard me with a gentle sigh, her arms rising to cradle me against her.

 _Some still have it_ , she said and rocked me as a child, as I drowned in regret.

Bacchus found us locked together, my head on her shoulder. He spoke, his words for us alone that set my bones to buzzing. _A gift_.

When I looked up, pale with grief, his face was stern, so unlike his merry joy, the perfume of his crown underlain with cedar and the sting of hops. _For your courage, my reluctant daughter_. _A blessing, and rarely given_.

His hand rose, a finger laid against my forehead and hers. _A sting for sweetness that you bear together_.

At his touch the dam broke, the passion that flowered in my youth and I had buried in a matron, a river of fever that cast me up gasping, and she against me trembling as well, drawing me away with our tunics until we had found a small space away from the radiant glory of our god, our tunics a blanket against the warm earth.

I kissed her for each of the years lost, the world growing dim around us as I flowed into her, mouth on the sweet and subtle tides of her body, fingers seeking currents that had waited for me as I had waited for her, now sweat-wet and slick, the sting finally striking me as I cried out beneath her and lay still, looking up into her face.

The sting of memory, of longing, of yearning, of the years spent apart and the girls we once were laying tangled under the grape arbor, the sting bursting into the sweetness of her body clasped against mine, into what should always have been.

It was sweeter than anything I had ever known and deeper than all I had called passion before it, the great love I bore her and the flood of passion denied, the memory of what I had forsaken to come here, to seek the blessing of our god.

 _Gone_ , I said, watching her face change with the sound of my voice, the spill of tears from her dark eyes. Gone the years and the distance and the empty house that no amount of wealth could fill. Gone the rending weight of blasphemy against what the gods made of me.

 _Here_ , she said, her tears salting the kiss, and so we were.

And so we will always be.


End file.
